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Life Expectancy has doubled in Every Country over the last 200 years

In the last 200 years, life expectancy has doubled in every country across the world.

Even the poorest countries in the world have life expectancies at least 10 years higher than the richest countries had two centuries ago.

Since the 1950s, there has been rapid convergence in life expectancies for the richest and poorest countries and now over 80% of the world’s population is expected to live over 65 years old.

Background

Today, living standards are dramatically higher than ever before (see here and here) and this has led to a rapid improvement in life expectancies across the world. As can be seen in the chart below, in 1800 the richest countries in the world had life expectancies below 40 years and this has doubled to over 80 years today. While increases in life expectancies in the poorest countries have been smaller in absolute terms they have still doubled from around 25 years in 1800 to over 50 years today.

In the last half a century there has been a significant convergence in life expectancies between the richest and poorest countries. Much of this advancement has been through improving the quality of life in poorer countries in the last 65 years. In 1950, life expectancies were twice as high in the richest countries in the world compared to the poorest countries. However, today the bottom 40% of the world’s population is expected to live around three-quarters as long as to top 10%. Even in today’s poorest countries, life expectancy is ten years higher than half of the world’s population in 1950 and the richest countries in the world in 1800.